i took a photograph, once, of your heart using an old Polaroid camera.
it developed in such a way that all the cracks showed through
as clearly as if your ventricles had been kissed by fault lines.
somewhere around Phoenix, Arizona there is a sign along the edge
of the highway that says, you are here not there,
and if your body were a map, i would be that sign marking your ribcage.
x marks the spot.
there is a tradition in my hometown that in September
we are supposed to down shots of vodka
every time we think of the person we love.
that means i’m drunk most of the time.
there are two ways to feel alive in this world
and the first one is to turn the car lights off and drive as fast
as possible down a dark highway
until you can feel all your bones rattling
and shaking into one another, whispering to each other:
if you could die here in this car no one would put flowers on your grave.
the second way is to make love to someone else in an empty hotel room
with clean sheets and the windows open
so that the cold gets between your bodies and freezes you together.
my parents were married for 43 years.
that does not mean they were married for 43 years of love;
it only means they stuck together through 43 years
of bitter fights, black coffee, midnight waltzes, and profuse apologies.
before he died,
my father turned to my mother and spoke his last words:
ifi ever had a home,
it was in that secret place between your knees.